A Layer of Apathy
by To-Kill-A-Wit-Beyond-Measure
Summary: Elsa discovers that she has an another power - one that is much more daunting. One-shot attempt to explain Hans' cruelty.


He grinned, but there was no warmth in the smile. Under a carefully composed layer of indifference, his eyes had the crazed ferocity of a lunatic. His smile morphed into a gleeful guffaw, as he sauntered arrogantly away from the door. Anna would be dead within the hour, and her formidable sister would undoubtedly be sentenced. He had won.

But deep underneath that hateful menace, in a dark crevice of the mind that could only be reached through the strongest magic, Hans wailed in agony. He felt the corners of his lips inexorably turning upward, and he knew he would be powerless to stop. Misery and pain washed over Hans. He was being controlled by something horrible, something OTHER, and all he could do was scream inside while he watched this THING that wasn't Hans lie and deceive and murder. All he could do was watch, and remember.

He remembered Anna. He remembered the way her delicate hand had felt in his when they first met. He remembered how he soon realized that Anna was anything but delicate. She was strong, and courageous, and stubborn, and adorably clumsy, and compassionate, and dammit he loved her so much. The pain that had engulfed him, swallowed him into a never-ending void of despair, when he saw the disbelief in her eyes, when he heard himself say, "Oh, Anna... if only there was someone who loved you..." It was unbearable. He had broken into a million shattered pieces when he heard his own voice saying these unfathomable things, betraying her.

**Earlier that day...**

Elsa's tears were beginning to slow. She was broken, too. There was no hope for Arendelle, and it was all her fault, and she... It was no use. Elsa detachedly felt herself collapsing onto the dank stone floor. She could only feel the paralyzing distress throbbing through her.

"No hope," she murmured, wondering idly if she was going insane. Dimly, she recalled the conversation she'd had when she was but a naïve princess. No, it wouldn't, it couldn't work... She was weak and lethargic and trembling from exertion. But she had to try.

"Ah," the unbelievably ancient troll had said, gazing wisely at Elsa's 6-year-old face. "Human girl, don't you understand? The ice is nothing compared to your true power. The ice is a metaphor." Elsa had furrowed her eyebrows, uncomprehending. She had powers BESIDES the ice? It couldn't be.

"Dear, dear, you have a very daunting power. The ice only represents what you can really do." The troll's voice had become hushed and panicked here.

"Listen, human princess, you mustn't tell anyone this... but you can also create... ah... figurative ice. You can turn a person into a monster so sinister and cold that their feelings disappear under a layer of apathy. Elsa, you must never use this power, unless it truly seems like the right decision... but even I cannot fathom a situation where you should."

Elsa couldn't fathom it either... but, well, the situation couldn't possibly get any worse, right? Some odd hunch told her that the key to solving this dilemma of dilemmas lay in her more mysterious power, the one that the old troll had described to her many moons ago.

Oh, damn it! She was helpless AGAIN; the disaster she had created was slowly, torturously slowly, destroying Arendelle. Elsa gritted her teeth, consumed by some primitive instinct far beyond frustration. She despised being helpless. They were all starving to death as the biting cold got sharper and sharper.

Images floated aimlessly to the surface of her mind: Little Anna, overcome with bubbly laughter, innocently trusting her big sister's magic, then Anna, falling off the icy slope with wide, terror-stricken eyes, and then Anna, limp and unconscious in the snow.

A resigned determination gripped Elsa as suddenly as little Anna had plummeted from the ice. She would discover how to use this power, and somehow, _somehow_, she would fix everything. Shaking with nerves, she willed the emotional ice to appear. And, somehow, she saw (or rather felt) it swim before her eyes. It was pure evil, worse than a raging fire. It was ice. Recklessly, she sent it out, pushed it aside, to anywhere, to elsewhere.

She screamed. There had been a wrenching pain in... her mind? She had no idea what she had just done, but some vaguely subconscious sense told her that the ice had found a home, a person. All she could do was hope that she hadn't worsened everything.


End file.
